Another late homer, this one by Crisp, bails out A’s at Houston

Oakland’s ability to hit late-innings homers throughout this series prevented a potentially embarrassing Astros sweep.

Houston, the majors’ worst team, hung close with the A’s in all three games, but the A’s got four homers from the seventh inning on and took the series two games to one. Coco Crisp did the honors today with a two-run shot in the seventh off Travis Blackley, just into the game in relief of Bud Norris, to give Oakland a 4-3 victory.

Blackley, the former A’s reliever, also gave up a homer to the first man he faced on Monday, when Josh Reddick’s two-run homer in eighth gave Oakland a win.

John Jaso also went deep for Oakland on Wednesday with a solo shot off Norris in the first. It was Jaso’s first homer since June 18.

A’s starter A.J. Griffin knows longballs a little too well himself. He gave up two homers on Wednesday, a solo shot by Jose Altuve in the fourth and a two-run drive by Carlos Corporan in the sixth. Griffin has allowed 23 homers in all, tied for second most in the majors. Seventh of them have been solo home runs.

“Two homers is pretty me, I guess,” Griffin said; he guessed that he gives up more homers than most because he’s usually around the plate and hitters are aware of it. “Ray Fosse always tells me that Catfish Hunter gave up a lot, so I shouldn’t worry about it, but I’m still pretty sick of it.”

Jaso, who has reached base safely in each of his past 27 starts at catcher, left the game in the eighth; he was hit in the mask by a foul tip for the third time in four games and he had a headache, so he was checked by a doctor after the game. He left Tuesday night’s game because he felt “fuzzy” after getting hit with a tip.

The play-Sogard-everyday crowd got a talking point in the seventh inning, when Eric Sogard doubled to left to send in Seth Smith and cut the Astros’ lead to one. That was the A’s only non-homer RBI hit all day. Oakland is batting .187 and averaging 2.58 runs per game the past 12 games. In the Houston series, Oakland went 3 for 26 with runners in scoring position and stranded 23 men in all.

On Wednesday, the A’s spruced up their recently shabby defense, making zero errors behind Griffin; they’d made three errors in each of the two previous games, their first back-to-back three-error games since Sept. 2009. No baserunning mishaps for Oakland, either.

“When we’re not swinging the bats well, we have good pitching, and we need to play well defensively,” Melvin said.

The A’s are 21-12 in one-run games this season, and their 21 one-run wins are tied for most in the majors. Oakland lost Tuesday night when leading after right innings for the first time since Aug. 4, 2012.